Force of Habit

December 15, 2010

An ex-nun signs on as administrative assistant to a private eye.

Somebody who really doesn't want rising businessman Blake Parker to marry his blue-blood fiancée Pamela van Alstyne has been sending them anonymous notes with insults and threats couched in biblical language. When Blake comes to Driscoll Investigations to get the sender identified without any of the bad publicity a police report might generate, Frank Driscoll tells his assistant, Giulia Falcone, that she'd do better than him at interviewing the most likely suspects, Blake's five ex-girlfriends. Giulia, who until 10 months ago was Sister Mary Regina Coelis, isn't eager to tackle the job, and her awkward conversation with snobbish Sandra Falke, who tells her, "You seem new at this," shows why not. But it doesn't matter that Giulia lets the women she's supposed to be interrogating get the better of her because she quickly ends up at the center of the case herself. Threatening notes and packages are sent to her; a stranger assaults her outside her apartment; a series of doctored photos persuades her boss that she's slept with the client, a narcissistic sexpot who couldn't believe she'd turn him down; and a turn toward what she fondly hopes is true love provokes a climactic scene she aptly describes as "porn theater of the absurd" and an anticlimactically overextended epilogue.

Loweecey's debut is not by any means your mother's detecting-nun story. Let's hope the promised series allows Giulia to lick her wounds in private while the suspects and their troubles take center stage.

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January 1, 2011

After ten years in the convent, Giulia Falcone now works as an investigator for the foul-mouthed former police detective Frank Driscoll, for whom she harbors some romantic feelings. The duo are hired to find the person who is stalking and threatening a local wealthy businessman and his fiancee, but Giulia soon attracts the stalker's attention. This debut mystery by a former nun contrasts a humorous narration with the realities of Giulia's adjustment to her new life outside the convent walls and her low self-esteem. VERDICT Fans of Lee Harris's Christine Bennett series (The Silver Anniversary Murder) about a former nun-turned-sleuth will want to see how Giulia solves the case.

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